The U.S. men’s national team will have a new face leading the program for the upcoming Concacaf Nations League and Gold Cup tournaments.
U.S. Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker today announced Tuesday that B.J. Callaghan will serve as head coach, taking over for Anthony Hudson who is departing for a new opportunity. Callaghan, who has served as assistant coach of the USMNT for the last four years, is currently the longest-serving member of the technical staff.
Callaghan was originally hired in 2019 as a strategy analyst before being promoted to assistant coach. U.S. Soccer’s search for a permanent head coach is also underway.
“B.J. has been an integral part of the USMNT staff during the last four years as this young team has grown and developed,” Crocker said. “Working alongside Anthony Hudson these last five months, we are confident he is prepared and ready to lead this group in the summer tournaments. We are grateful to Anthony for the tremendous job he did and wish him success in the future.”
“I understand the responsibility of the job and am honored to have the opportunity to build upon the progress this group has made the last four years,” Callaghan said. “Together, we have built a strong culture and a great understanding of how we want to play, and we expect to continue to build on that progress. Our goal is clear: defend both of our Concacaf titles.”
The 41-year-old Callaghan previously was with the Philadelphia Union for seven years, first with the Union Academy for two years and then five years as a first team assistant coach to Jim Curtin. A former player at Ursinus College, Callaghan served as an assistant at Villanova University.
Hudson departs after having served as an assistant coach for the USMNT since 2021 before taking the helm as interim head coach in January 2023. With wins against Grenada and El Salvador in March, Hudson advanced the team to the Concacaf Nations League Final Four as well as the Gold Cup where they will defend both titles. During Hudson’s tenure in charge, he continued the effort to pursue dual nationals that resulted in a number of players (Folarin Balogun, Timothy Tillman) choosing to represent the United States.
“I would like to thank U.S. Soccer for the opportunity to be part of such a great team of players and staff,” Hudson said. “It’s been an honor to represent the National Team and one that I have truly valued and enjoyed. The group is in good hands with B.J., and I’m excited to watch and support the team as it continues to grow and reach the heights we all know they are capable of.”
The USMNT faces rivals Mexico on June 15 in Las Vegas, with either Canada or Panama awaiting them in the finals on June 18, should they advance.
i’d not realized arena was a keeper when he played. this is an under-radar consideration in his role in developing meola at UVa and coaching keller, friedel, and even the beginning of howard’s NT career. there has been discussion of why US keeping fell off post howard. some may be that the emergence of sweeper keeper tactics distracting from basic shot stopping. some may be steffen’s knee. but it’s an interesting secondary question whether arena played some part.
USSF is the worst federation! USSF seems to hate it’s national team!
No “plan B” or “plan C”? sa
Bottom line is no one here knows what’s truly going on. We don’t know who Crocker has had discussions with. We don’t know who is going to interview in June. We don’t know who politely declined when approached. If we’re waiting around for Zlatko Dalic, Joachim Lowe, or Lopetegui this will all work out. If we’re waiting around and end up with Vermes, Marsch, or Pareja then it was a waste. From the interviews it sure sounds like Crocker is looking to hook a big fish. The truth is there is not going to be a huge turnover in the roster no matter who gets the job, because there aren’t these world class US players hiding out there in Denmark, Hungary, Israeli leagues. Some guys will step up, some will get injured, some will get older but this group is going to largely be around for the next few years. The Netherlands didn’t qualify in 2018, did they throw all those guys out? No, many of the guys who failed then ran circles around that exhausted US group.
i would anticipate several changes if we got in a new coach. maybe 1/3 of the team or so. i think 9, back, and backup keeper are unsettled as it is. i think some of the choices are system guys who would disappear if the system changed. i think some of the choices are coach’s pets who would lose that status under new management. i don’t know if both weston and musah would start under a new coach. our wingbacks are vulnerable on the counter and a new coach might want stay at home choices.
i personally think many US fanboys kind of buy into a groupthink/meritocracy thing where the current bunch must be the right bunch. i think this has some appeal when the team is decent but not incredible — this has in fact been the stage of competitiveness where we have tended to settle on tactics and personnel — even if we could do even better.
i think the turnover would be more or less dramatic depending if they are an outsider or not, similar tactics or not. if you brought in a foreign coach with different tactics i don’t think he’d give a ton of credit to what preceded him — that’s a good way to get fired is do what the last guy did. you see how hudson has basically been a sort of fizzling out of diminishing returns on GB ball.
now, if they hire marsch, i could see more continuity. but based on wales i am not sure high press is secret sauce.
to be crystal clear, while i would trial a bunch of players to see them, i think some of the potential gamechangers are fairly known people who we have made strained excuses about not calling for years, eg, cohen, green, ledezma, mihailovic, EPB, pefok. or they are some of the U20s, including the ones not released. we could also repurpose existing players eg dest as a wing. i also think we should be trialing some guys with huge numbers in hungary or holland or whatever, but i also think historically we often would give pulisic or the like the summer off.
i think you’re neglecting that, say, the world cup backline was like Z and ream, striker was up in the air, etc. there are a limited amount of locked slots and i am not sure a more outsider coach would necessarily think musah or weston or pepi or jedi or steffen was that much a lock. we have a lot of players who are positional misfits but good athletes with some skill.
put differently, this has only recently since about JK been a team that feels compelled to literally turn out the first choice for summer tournaments. around then the previous understanding that the elite players had proven themselves and might use a rest gave way to meritocracy obsession. before then we didn’t try to turn out our best except for perhaps confed cup. we also weren’t constantly having players out injured. hmmm
go back and count up how many caps reyna or mcbride had. donovan got so many because he used to be exceptional and we used to use GC to test the margins as opposed to chase trophies. i personally don’t think running out 90% of the same people who lost round of 16 does a thing to move this along. if you want bigger things there will be tactical or selection changes. the fanboys can then tout them too.
side point if the guys at leeds were gods they wouldn’t be relegated.
Kind of like how Berhalter brought an almost completely different roster to the GC? Part of those players playing smaller amounts was the old rules were you could replace players after group stage of GC. NL has also added to congestion because those matches matter. Easy to say take these friendlies off, not easy to say take this competitive match off.
We really aren’t operating our roster selections any differently. You just don’t like the selections being made. You base your selections off of a handful of appearances for the NT, the staff bases theirs off of hours and hours of both NT performance, training sessions, and club performance. Both could be effective I suppose. Is Julian Green the world class goal scorer your matches against Belgium and France suggest or is he the modest player he neither scored nor assisted over 9 months in the Bundesliga?
JR
“NL has also added to congestion because those matches matter. Easy to say take these friendlies off, not easy to say take this competitive match off.”
It depends on what else is going on.
All things being equal, having separate rosters for two tournaments during the summer has always been difficult because if a player has to do two tournaments then they have no summer break.
Back in 2007 the USMNT was in both the Gold Cup and Copa America
They wound up sending the best team they could to the Gold Cup and more of a “developmental” squad to Copa.
Bob gave out some BS about our regional championship being “more important ” but he had to say that.
The reality was that the Gold Cup winner got a ticket to the 2009 Confederations Cup. That’s what really mattered. Bob won the Gold Cup and went on to have a great Confed Cup. That was very helpful with our good showing in the 2010 WC.
The World Cup is #1 for the US. We don’t have a Euro or a Copa America to console us if we suck at the World Cup. Italy wins Euro 2020. Great!
Italy fail to qualify for WC 2022. Bad. But in 2024 they quickly get another shot at the Euros.
That’s the beauty of a two year cycle. A chance at Glory every two years. The USMNT has to wait 4 years
It doesn’t look like anything like that will happen this summer but, make no mistake, the USSF will “tank” our minor league tournaments, the NL or the Gold Cup if it suits them.
They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again if they feel they need to.
Lets see how preparation for Copa America goes.
All this change in such a short time is obviously not good. However, there are two issues. Any US coach knows he will be in the World Cup since US qualifying is not required. Also, the size of the field is much larger, which probably means more weak teams. That should mean that a medium strong team will have an easier time making the knockout round. Since we don’t have to qualify, the delay isn’t as important. Still, I wish we had a permanent coach already.
with a young team that just made the round of 16 the last thing we should be worried about is can we just advance. this is kind of like i don’t care if the US (and its tactics) make last place honduras look bad — it should — i care how they handle canada and mexico. i keep hammering away at the two real issues being player development and the fact we take our foot off the gas right at this stage of success. tactics and selection ossify. if you want to be a winner you need to figure out why you lost when you did and be hungry that we have more rounds than that. getting excited how easy it will be to progress doesn’t address what makes you better.
along similar lines, there was a narrative where being host in a bigger world cup tournament might mean we could shift tactics away from what concacaf requires but then last world cup looked very concacaf-y for us. i think the fanboys are wrong on whether we have to be physica;l to progress in that they see it as opposed rather than complimentary to the technical and tactical leaps we need to make.
along similar lines, US U20 is in the quarters but that’s been the going rate 3 tournaments straight. can we beat uruguay? brazil? the teams in the other half? they could easily have said “we’ll get out of group easy” but now’s when the banana peels arrive. to me you can’t look past group round and you need to have a concept and selection ready to beat the frances and argentinas of the world.
also bears reminding that in some of our cross-continental games last cycle like northern ireland or qatar we kind of had to work for it. or how close our salvadoran games were. i think there’s hints of arrogance in the people who want us to schedule harder or think any world cup could be easy. we can’t beat canada routinely anymore. maybe work on that first before we feel compelled to schedule germany and giggle at potential world cup draws. this team is still very much in the working for it phase.
I don’t know if you were critiquing my post or not since you are so prolix and indirect. I have some disagreements with some of your points, but I will leave them for another time. The point of my post was the positives of a job as USMNT coach to some coach considering the job. Some people seem to think we can’t get a good coach, but with our situation, a very promising group of players, and enough money, I don’t see that as a problem. We don’t know who has expressed interest. I will point out, however, that before Berhalter was hired, David Moyes expressed interest and he has done pretty well with West Ham since.
GP: affordability is nonsense. sarachan was month to month, paid in full. GB completed his contract and was paid in full. we owe him zilch. hudson was short term and probably just tore up the last months of his deal to leave. paid in full. callaghan, two tournaments, paid in full. (side point, that’s a sucky list)
i keep hearing mention of paying off past coaches. JK was fired 16. he probably had 2 years left and that was 7 years ago to pay it. are we seriously saying we are broke for paying him off 7 years ago? maybe $2m that we probably had to pay by 2018. arena coached through late 17 with a likely end of contract in 18. we’re talking half a year of salary (half a million?) hanging out there for owing arena for what became sarachan’s first few pre-russia games. i am sure that was paid 5 years ago.
i also think the underwhelming nature of our efforts of late plus how many coaches we have gone through suggests taking more care, picking better people, and paying what it costs. the cheapest alternative to paying 2 coaches for 2018 isn’t another cheap value coach, it’s paying the market rate for one coach who is successful and runs his full term. to me the “marsch” idea sounds like a good way to continue our recent proud tradition of struggle and coaching turnover, as well as having to pay 2 people to do 1 term’s worth of job. so maybe measure twice and pay more then cut just once.
Automatic qualification is not necessarily good. CONCACAF is almost unquestionably the easiest path for any country to get to the World Cup anyway and we always have except for 2018. For the most part, the USMNT plays a Powder Puff schedule mostly at home. The team is generally usually pretty soft.
The bad thing is that the Hex or now the Octagon was our best chance to shape up and toughen the team just prior to the WC. The good thing this time around is the Copa America where the USMNT should have their asses handed to them. It could tell Gregg a lot about his team.
“That should mean that a medium strong team will have an easier time making the knockout round.”
Some will tell you that making the knockouts should be taken for granted. And they have a point in that we always do, except for 2006 and , of course 2018, when we weren’t there at all.
But if we can have an easier path to the knockouts this time, maybe Gregg or whoever will have a chance to rotate the troops. That could make a big difference in the knockout game.
Funny that some of the same people that say the GC and NL didn’t matter when Berhalter won them are now beside themselves that we don’t have a manager for these tournaments.
you’re confusing competitive results with prep time. this is the part of the year when the coach gets 6-8 weeks of practice and game time with his players, can evaluate with patience, can rotate players on the field to see, can bed in a new system/ formation/ tactics — and we are getting a new coach. way this is going they will have spent weeks with hudson, 1-2 months with BJ, and then the new coach will have 2-3 weeks of windows left. do you not see where the most important figure gets the least face time?
i see someone below saying do you expect the nicaragua result to be any different, but i think that nutshells my concern that the fans care more about these tournament results than they do whether the team meshes, improves, and beds in their tactics where they play better going forward, or tries new players who can improve the results when it matters. unlike the fanboys i am not eager to trade a regional trophy 1/2 of the times per cycle for world cup success. this is one reason the veteran continuity provo roster bothered me — i think it’s short termist nonsense including players who didn’t do well enough last november, missed the cut, or are simply too old to help. the focus should be making something of 2026. USSF used to understand i might trade something now — a focus on tactics, or player evaluation, for example — for a better drilled and chosen team later. but we want our shiny toy now.
historically the US would let a few key players sit the summer out. thinking about rest and injuries, and protecting those key players as much as they can. they would work on bringing the next generation into gold cup camps, spend a few weeks seeing how they responded, keep the successes, cut the screwups. you then compared to now would have a pretty good idea which second or third string could handle pressure and help the team.
or we can show up with last year’s first choice plus balogun and zendejas — maybe even play how we did last year — and learn very little. and then give the new head coach a few days of practice x 2 or 3 windows in the fall to try and evaluate talent and bed in their new ideas. then conclude that window playing germany and ghana while trying to teach tactics, which is absurd as well. do you not see how this is backwards? this is awful planning and a waste of the summer when we can work with players longer.
“do you not see where the most important figure gets the least face time?”
“do you not see how this is backwards? this is awful planning and a waste of the summer when we can work with players longer.”
Your thinking is bass ackwards.
Everyone would prefer that the new person be in place yesterday.
But it should be clear to anyone watching that it isn’t going to happen until the end of the summer like they say. We all can speculate until the cows refuse to come home about the reasons for that But we , as JR says, don’t know shit.
With the USSF you should always expect the worst.
If you thought the USSF would do this as professionally as possible then you should adjust your medication. They are going about it better than they used to but they don’t have a pot to piss in and they are stupid, corrupt and small minded.
We all are getting just about what you should expect from such entities.
the rhetoric sounds cute but history says klinsi took years to figure out how he would play, and GB took years to get the team comfortable with his tactics, and most of the cycle to sort out selection. or are we sweeping 2019 under the rug? bradley was one of the few coaches to come in and click immediately. he won the 2007 gold cup. GB’s US team looked clunky in 2019 and lost the gold cup to mexico. he was still under firing threat before the summer 2021 tournaments. even then he stumbled to 3rd in qualifying as he struggled with tactics and selection.
along those lines, are we forgetting how sarachan, tactics aside, found several guys in 2018 GB forgot about then rediscovered in 2021? the pretense is the new guy gets it all right. experience is the new guy may throw out some baby with bath water and have to circle back to 2023 players.
so we can do things to speed the process or make it as slow as possible. some will be picking the right new coach. but some is they could use these summers to work with the team. all the recent coaches have encountered a slow process instead of a rapid one.
My gawd lol US Soccer as an org. is a complete cluster F.
I guess at this point it’s better to stay the course and make the right permanent hire, even if it means we stay in interim limbo thru this summer’s tourneys. I still think it would have been wiser to hire a manager on a 2 yr contract after the world cup was over, to take us thru this summer, integrate new players, and end on the Copa ’24. Then decide whether to extend to the ’26 world cup or look in a different direction.
and yes i think it’s awful the interim has no HC experience. that’s not worthy of the job. as i said below IMO if someone aspiring to the job like marsch is unwilling to do just the summer with some risk that they only get hired long term if we’re impressed, then their priorities are wrong and they aren’t who i want coaching my team.
why would Marsch deal with that type of uncertainty when he has offers from several european clubs circling for his possible signature for this upcoming season? AS Monaco is one I keep hearing of right now!
There is no possible way you can actually think a qualified manager would take a one month contract. Only someone with an unworthy CV or an idiot would take that deal. It would be an insult to the type of manager we are trying to hire to ask him/her to do a trial.
you’re conflating my wishes with the real jesse. i do anticipate the Real Jesse would turn it down as he did a similar offer from saints — perhaps even crocker himself — late in their season trying to fend off relegation. and yet someone always does take relegation fighter jobs. this is where i kick over to Wish Jesse. i am sure the compensation is better the “i only take the full time job” route. i am sure there is less immediate job risk that way as well. but are you punching a clock or are you a coach who seeks a real challenge? as i said, i’d be unsure of the coaches who turned it down. we need someone who sees this as a challenge he plans on genuinely improving. ok, put up or shut up this summer. if you can’t, say, run the table all summer, are you the guy i really want?
to be real, i expect a lot will take the easy road. i kind of want “bradley heads to egypt.”
if they aren’t going to test their acumen then hand it to a proven winner, and i don’t mean with the big spender of the austrian league that hasn’t lost a title in most of a decade.
Sorry you’re delusional no experienced professional in any job would be like yeah I’ll work for you for 6 weeks and then reevaluate. Especially during their hiring season. Wait I have a 2yr deal in Monaco or you’ll pay me 100,000 for 6 weeks and if we don’t win I’m out and all those other jobs are closed? No way anyone takes that deal. You keep thinking elite international soccer is like you’re U15 team, where yeah somebody trying to hustle their way would take a “let’s see how you do this weekend and go from there”. If you said that to Joachim Low, Jesse Marsch, Lopetegui, Viera, Henry, or any accomplished manager, they would tell you to go spend quality time with yourself and hang up.
i meant my post for postmaster. i disagree with your premise. the names i have heard rumored as in the application pile are inferior and i think the sole reason for all the delay is to go through the empire-building process of hiring suits to hire the coach, which has borne no fruit in terms of coaching quality.
if we simply tasked a USSF executive with a checkbook and a budget, to call the agent(s) of leading world coach(es) we wanted, this would have been done in january. i do not see this process as having superior results. i see it as imitating how corporations hire an MBA for some middle management job. which they do that way because the candidates are often anonymous to them and you have to sort out who seems best on paper and more. this is pro sports. there is a limited set of name brand coaches. you know what you think of them. you know how they play. you can see their win-loss record online. the good ones might get offended having to send in a resume and wait. the process doesn’t fit the nature of the market or our degree of information and only seems to result in worse candidates who we make optimistic bets on their hopeful value upside. when i think we should be hiring a proven portfolio and reputation which should precede them.
To be clear, I don’t like waiting to hire, it is simply the best of bad options at this point. Your reality check is that there is no bigtime “name brand” manager out there who wants to coach our USMNT right now. Or if there is, they are in the process of wrapping up their european season or in the middle of a mLS season and US soccer is being professional about approaching them. It will be better to get the right person for next years Copa than rush someone in for the gold cup…
i don’t buy there is no one to hire now. and i think that will only get worse as the european offseason progresses — not better — as potential candidates go ahead and take jobs. based on hudson’s “august” contract i think july-september was the plan all along. based on crocker not being officially in the job until august, ditto. i think we are literally waiting on crocker to formally expire his saints deal, when their season is over, and have deliberately set up some 2 layer process that will take until he formally switches jobs. crocker said we’re looking then interviewing then something else and his timeline sounded like july or august just to work through his process.
i am half worried whether we have someone hired for the september window which is around labor day. you really need someone hired early august for them to have input who is selected, and start communicating their ideas to the selection.
i don’t think people realize it but this is basically cycle year 2 now. normal world cup would have been last summer. one year down. to me the most useful windows are these long tournaments where they can practice and play games for weeks. this is frittering away 1 of 3 summers. for what? process, and not even a good one?
Crocker is already on record as saying Southampton are allowing him to perform dual functions for both the Saints and the USMNT, so I don’t think he is waiting to be done with his current, full time gig with the Saints before he is able to interview and hire a coach in the interim. It seems he is waiting for a specific set of managers to be done with their club seasons(he has already alluded to this as well)before finishing up interviews and making a final determination on a manager
all due respect but EPL teams often release managers and other staff early. have you not noticed say CFC hiring brighton’s coach during the season? you don’t think he had a contract with obvious term left, as well as moral obligation? and yet. i am sure they either do a mutual tearup — no more salary for no more work — or the US pays a buyout. this is absurd and to be crystal clear this is the second cycle they have done this absurdity. last time we had to wait on stewart a couple months — even though he was quitting midseason — and GB end of the season — and they missed the playoffs, a hint at the quality we were getting.
personally i think if your suit (or coach) is available because he got relegated so bad that’s a bad sign. CFC was at least stealing brighton’s top half coach.
Chelsea paid Brighton over 26 million dollars to take him. Not including the 15 million they agreed to per year for Potters contract. Todd Boley doesn’t write the checks for the NT sorry. USMNT can’t afford either of those numbers.
JR: i doubt a suit like crocker costs $20-odd million to be let out of the last 2 months of his deal while he, what, twiddles his thumbs? i also doubt saints, being relegated, wants that much to receive his actual work some more.
to be real, i don’t get the hire anyway. was against it. i just think a la GB last time it’s doubly silly to be waiting out some fake contract term period the other side doesn’t even really want.
The hiring search isn’t waiting on Crocker’s contract, it’s waiting on the managers to come available. Crocker has been working on the manager. Either managers whose contracts are ending or are looking to leave because their situation isn’t what they want like Lopetegui
I find the apparent lack of any professional head coaching experience very troubling (and I know he has a lot of very relevant experience/knowledge). It’s not like nothing is going on for the next few months. Puts him in a tough spot, the team too.
i know i wasn’t a fan. i also know you don’t want to be the team who holds an interim to a part time gig. but one assumes he got a may paycheck and basically set the NL roster. ok, great, it’s your team to manage. we have a deal. it’s overly overly overly generous in compensation and you even getting to hold the position this long, for your resume and performance. you will fulfill the deal. i can’t imagine hudson having to fulfill a deal when we play in 2 weeks and he just picked the provo selection would offend future coaching candidates where it’s bad process.
kind of obnoxious because the implication is he was already sending out resumes or agent feelers when he had 2 months left. to me you either ride your deal out or you bow out after the last window he coached.
“It’s not like nothing is going on for the next few months. Puts him in a tough spot, the team too.”
??
What exactly is going on for the next few months that can’t wait for the new person?
June 15 Mexico NL
June 24 Jamaica Gold Cup
June 28 TBD Gold Cup
July 2 Nicaragua Gold Cup
What irreparable damage to the 2026 World Cup effort will be caused by not having the new boss around?
The new boss would probably have delegated quite a lot of the nuts and bolts effort for the preparation for those matches to the assistant staff anyway
What tough spot would the team be in?
You really think they will lose to Mexico and be out of the NL?
So they lose being the final. And? Big deal.
You really think they will get knocked out of progressing in the Gold Cup by Nicaragua and Jamaica? I doubt that but even if you’re right again so what?
Being out of the Gold Cup would deprive the USMNT of some structured competitive games that would be useful for the new manager in terms of learning about the team. But if that puts the new person in a tough spot that’s good.
We’ll find out what we have early on.
USMNT fans are such snowflakes. It will be good to know right away which of the players and coaches are crap wussies so we can dump them and prepare properly for Copa America.
It would be good to know if the new manager is full of shit.
Of course, even then they won’t be fired right away especially if it is Gregg that they rehire. At least we’ll know what we’re dealing with.
i do not think we are taking this job seriously. people made fun of me for being critical of the interim and saying he should be cashiered. “but he’s just a temporary placeholder while we hire a new coach soon enough.” or the recent argument went he had a contract through august we “needed” to honor. and now — the hiring process is going to be 8-9 months and we need another interim for our interim whose job was to fulfill his short deal and to keep the seat warm. in which case this looked awful in january and not much better since.
i think this job should be earned. if he can walk away for a job, this should have been done months ago if the contract wasn’t worth the paper it was typed on. otherwise the coach got to control the team for 3 windows plus the provo list for at least NL then just skip away. hehe
union academy is a decent resume item, as is US assistant, but he does not appear to have been a head coach at any level and we’re handing him 2 tournaments. this is not “of the standard.” i argued standards were eroding. we’ve now gone from winners to midtable to never had a winning record to never been an adult pro head coach. oh btw guide the golden generation for 6 months of the summer.
amusingly one way to have dealt with this is test their little favorite marsch coach this summer and see what happens. but crocker likely knows jesse won’t take a short term deal because he turned down a similar crocker offer. which, to me, if you aren’t willing to accept an already aggressive hire on a trial basis maybe you want the money more than the position. BB earned his way off interim. why can’t our application pile?
Mr. Voice,
“i do not think we are taking this job seriously. people made fun of me for being critical of the interim and saying he should be cashiered. “but he’s just a temporary placeholder while we hire a new coach soon enough.”
Who is we?
People make fun of you because you want to fire an interim for no sane reason.
Look, I didn’t like his glasses either but that’s no reason to fire someone. They made him look too much like David Wagner and that may be one reason to fire him I guess.
Leeds fired interim Gracia because he clearly wasn’t stopping the rot and they were going to hell. They probably should have fired him sooner.
But what grievous wound to the USMNT program would you have saved the USMNT from by canning Interim Hudson?
Poor fashion choices?
Were you going to save them from mediocrity?
Did he not beat Grenada and El Salvador enough to advance in the Cupcake Cup?
Did he not get the USMNT to the Powder Puff NL semis vs El Tri?
Was tying Mexico in the El Cheapo Classico a fireable offense to you? Upset because my favorite punching bag, Ferreira, finally scored?
“or the recent argument went he had a contract through august we “needed” to honor. ”
Did you read his contract? I didn’t but if he had one, and maybe he didn’t, there might have been a clause about him being free to go if he got a permanent offer to manage your high school team.
By definition an interim manager usually understands that they can be let go at any time. But the same is true for Hudson, he can leave any time.
“adjective
in or for the intervening period; provisional or temporary”
I’m sure if Carlo Ancelotti had called Crocker yesterday and wanted to start this weekend, Hudson would have understood. And the same would be true if Hudson had left for the Brazil job, Ancelotti’s rumored destination.
“and now — the hiring process is going to be 8-9 months and we need another interim for our interim whose job was to fulfill his short deal and to keep the seat warm. in which case this looked awful in january and not much better since.”
Look at the bright side, you get more chances to whine endlessly.
“i think this job should be earned. if he can walk away for a job, this should have been done months ago if the contract wasn’t worth the paper it was typed on. otherwise the coach got to control the team for 3 windows plus the provo list for at least NL then just skip away. hehe”
Are you saying Hudson should have been chained to his desk? Is Illinois a right to work state?
Who told you jobs are “earned”?? Did Gregg earn his job?
What your record of performance at other jobs does is earn you the chance to prove you can continue to do what you did elsewhere. “Win the Champions League title a bunch of times? Okay Zizou, maybe you can handle Gio Reyna, his parents and Pulisic! ”
But no matter whether they do the hiring process just like you want to or do it like Crocker is doing it, there are no guarantees.
Your hiring method has just as much chance of blowing up in your face as whatever Crocker is doing.
When the new El Jefe gets the job they have to keep performing until they don’t.
Then they will turn you loose on El Jefe and then they will cut that person off at the knees.
How many high priced, highly qualified players and managers, guaranteed to succeed, have crashed and burned at their new gig?
You need an example?
There’s this MLS team called TFC. Go and look over their last couple of years and see how using your process is working out for them. They have this really highly qualified manager and his son there.
“which, to me, if you aren’t willing to accept an already aggressive hire on a trial basis maybe you want the money more than the position.”
Good for you but you aren’t the candidate in question. Jesse knows more about how that works than you do.
What does “summer” mean? You mean win the Powder Puff Gold Cup and you get the job?
Any half wit manager can win the Powder Puff Cup with that squad. Winning the Gold Cup has never proven to be any indicator of future success. Arena won the 2017 Gold Cup just before Couva. Does anyone care or remember that?
And while Jesse is farting around with the Gold Cup, he could be passing up other opportunities. Jesse is young. If he does well there will be other opportunities to manage the USMNT. He already looks like a job slut with his ” the deal is almost done adventures”.
The trial summer job thing is DOA. Jesse wants the job but I think if they were going to offer it to him he would have had it by now.
Of course maybe all the others don’t work out and they have to come back to Jesse, if he’s not managing Brazil by then, but there’s zero reason for Jesse to do this bogus trial BS.
He’s not good enough yet anyway.
“BB earned his way off interim.”
Very different circumstances.
Compared to Jesse, Bob had nothing better to do. Bob always knew he was JK’s place holder and he made the best of it. you might notice that Bob has never been particularly friendly with the USSF since he left.
This makes US soccers decision to not get a head coach in place before these two tournaments even more confounding and irritating.
the story last time went that sarachan was month-to-month. those need to be the contract terms next time. you earn more care taking by taking proven care of the Thing. this is a joke, poor performance but we owe him a half year then he doesn’t honor the half year.
given. the weak quality of the interims and seeming long term candidates i don’t get why this needs to be so dragged out and on such poor terms. we’re not suggesting SAF be interim or zidane full time. for hudson you can coach january and depending how bad it is maybe you get march. i agree re why is it taking so long but i also think the right to caretake over a time period should be earned. this only underlines that.
i am sure the fanboys will pipe up that month-to-month might cost more all told but i can’t believe hudson was THAT expensive and the team deserves quality, hudson’s resume shouldn’t have empowered him much, and any added cost is motivation to get a move on.
personally i cannot believe the current process is resulting in better candidates and leadership. my vibe is the sort of coach we want doesn’t go through some application process. he might sit down and chat about fit and goals but he wouldn’t call it an interview. a lot of it is offering an agent a number. this process of calling an agent with an offer doesn’t take 8-9 months and likely results in better options than what we’re hiring or considering. in the end i am practical and what we’re doing isn’t.
What that should tell you is that this is an oddball of a job and not necessarily a desirable one.
Portugal opening? Martinez snapped up in two seconds
Uruguay opening? Biesla already hired.
The proof is out there for you all to see.
If this job was so damned desirable, candidates would have been lining up as soon as Gregg collided with the Reynas and crashed and burned.
Instead the USSF and now Crocker are now on a search and rescue mission. Jesse is their safety school while they still haven’t found what they are looking for.
all due respect but this is that level job just not handled like these other jobs. as i said, i don’t think “pep” or “zidane” or “mourinho” is a “send in a resume” guy. i think if you want them you call their agent and offer a number. if they want the job at that price you get them tomorrow, perhaps after some slight haggling. they do not type up a resume, mail it to chicago, and then sit in a waiting room alongside callaghan and GB and vermes or whoever we are interviewing.
the process itself does not correlate to the kind of coach we want. it is designed to attract fired foreign coaches or domestics. it is not designed to work with marquee names or their faster timetables.
to be blunt, it’s intended as corporate HR legal CYA akin to the rooney rule in NFL. i think the end product is secondary which speaks for itself. are we trying to win a world cup or what.
Mr. Voice,
You’re talking about the USSF here.
“the process itself does not correlate to the kind of coach we want. it is designed to attract fired foreign coaches or domestics. it is not designed to work with marquee names or their faster timetables.”
The kind of coach the USSF wants may not be the kind of coach that YOU want.
“Process” is a pretty generous term for this cluster.
There is no “process”.
There’s never been a process.
The USSF “process” , like that of many teams, is largely reactive, not proactive.
The plan was Gregg was supposed to be a two-term manager.
• Qualify
• Learn from Qatar
• Consolidate the Berhalter’s regime with a glorious 2026 World Cup run.
The Reynas saved us from that.
“fired coaches” You are going to have to look really long and hard before you find a good manager who hasn’t been fired.
The USMNT manager’s position is not attractive enough to lure a top manager from a successful program if that program is a level equal to or better than the level where the USMNT dwells.
I can just see Mikel Arteta leaving Arsenal for the USMNT. Cam you?
The USWNT management, a winning bunch, picks managers with credentials because they know how to win and the USWNT want to stay champions. The only sliver of Hope here is that at least Cindy Cone, someone who understands about winning, is somewhat involved.
The USMNT illuminatti , a bunch of entitled, privileged frat boys with an inferiority complex just below the surface, pick their privileged buddies for the top positions. Go down the list of our male players over the years. Outside of rigged CONCACAF trophies, there’s not a lot of top-flight trophies there.
In the current bunch, our leader Pulisic, given his ceiling, is an overall disappointment but has a Champions League medal, a Super Cup Medal, a Club World Cup medal and a DFB Pokal Medal. Not bad at all.
Gio also has a DFB Pokal Medal and almost had a BL Champions medal but BVB choked on him just like the legendary Filipino team, the Manila Folders.
The last American to win the BL and the UEFA cup? Tom Dooley, a serious badass that most of you never heard of or saw play. That was in the early 90’s.
That’s not a lot of players.
There is no a culture about “winning” and “excellence” on the men’s side.
It’s always been about;
“Hey not bad for an American!”
These guys perpetuate that because it lessens the pressure on them to succeed.
You want our guys to play for Fulham so they will always play but never be at risk of actually winning anything. Your mentality is just like Landon’s play it safe, be risk free and be happy at home. And that’s fine but it won’t win you no World Cup.
Who is our so-called GOAT? For many It’s Landon. I love the guy and had no problem with him staying in MLS all his career.
But think about what the message was that he was sending.
His message was that be the best you can be but only up to a certain point.
Once it gets uncomfortable then fuck it, it’s not worth it. Dial it back and stay there. You’ll be happier in the long run. Be happy as a frog in shit playing for Fulham.
Which is a good idea if you want to be a healthy, normal and happy human being.
It seems Landon led a normal SoCal kid upbringing. He did have success very young. He went into the Bradenton Residency young, signed a big Leverkusen contract when he came of age. Wasn’t happy in dreary Deutschland. He knew the way back to San Jose so he arranged a loan back to Cali. Then the second he stepped on the field for the Quakes he became a super star and the face of MLS.
He was a soccer savant, a genius. Barring injury he was always going to be a big star in MLS and make a great living that way.
But over in Euro and South America, a lot of these high-level big deal stars, they came from poverty. Many of the kids competing with the likes of our kids have no place desirable to go if they get cut. So, they push themselves beyond what we think of as mentally healthy because they have no choice.
All things being equal, Landon is a fairly normal human being.
But a lot of his Euro peers, Euro stars, are seriously fucked up individuals They are not healthy. Look at Maradona, a tragic figure in sport full of tragic figures. Or look at the executives at Bayern Munich. They are all wack jobs but many of them are good at what they do.
The point here, Mr. Voice, is that our competition is crazy. They will push themselves to insane levels to win that most of us won’t. The USSF is semiprofessional in comparison.
We will be better adjusted as normal people but they will be better on the soccer field.
Because that’s what they do. That’s all they do. This isn’t competing for a spot on your high school team.
That’s what we’re dealing with.
You’re acting as if the USSF wants to build a team that eventually will seriously contend for the World Cup. They want to but not if it means they have to pay someone more than they paid Gregg. Not if it means they’ll get another JK who might be willing to mention unpleasant realities about US soccer to the media. Not if it means they will actually have to sacrifice for this.
That’s why Gregg had to be dug out of his position like a tick. He came at the right price point and was just good enough to satisfy the casual fan. And if you paid attention the majority of ex-USMNT player pundits were seriously behind him even though it was clear many of them had at least the same reservations about Gregg’s fitness for the job as the general fan base did. Because he was one of theirs, one of the boys.
At least they were until Danielle opened the can of worms.
The point is that Old Boys club fraternity is very, very strong. That’s why I distrust any ex player, even a man as notable as Gooch, in an executive position at the USSF.
Remember the casual fan is the market.
The serious knowledgeable soccer fan, they will pay attention to soccer regardless. The USSF is not too interested in them. They just get in the way.
The casual fan, that’s the ticket. Gregg should have been fired after he cocked up the bed in the 2019 Gold Cup with his search for width BS.
But Jay was still around installing the hostile workplace thing. And even after Jay moved on, well WOW, Gregg won TWO trophies!!!
Never mind that the opposition was like Georgia or Alabama vs Disco Tech. or Wassamatta U.
The USSF have been making this up as they go along ever since Danielle Reyna figured out how to blow the doors off of their Clown Car.
You all hate the Reynas but I credit them for ripping the scab off and exposing the sleaze underneath.